Introducing the Blog Fiction Widget

As you may have noticed my sidebar is different. Where I used to list every single blog fiction's individual feed, you will now notice there is only one.

My sidebar feeds were never meant to be used as a blogroll of every single blog fiction site that exists. That's how the links forum is meant to be used. Rather, it was meant to try and give some exposure to active Blog Fiction. The idea was two fold. First, a reader may notice a site name or blog title that would catch his eye and be clicked out of curiosity. The second reason I had them was so that readers might notice when their favorite blog fiction had been updated, they could check it out.

Google's blogger software allowed me to quickly list the feeds, however, this came at the cost of a very limited feature set. First of all, the Blog order was always static. If I put Yanni's Block above SpaceHaggis, it would always be like that. Second, the feed list would get crowded. So I would take down the feeds of blog fiction that wasn't updating. Which totally took away my second reason for posting the feeds. Or, I had to manually check every single feed myself - which would be a lot of work.

My initial solution was to aggregate all the feeds into a single rss feed, and then post that. However, google limited me to only listing the latest 5 posts from a feed. Plus, I then couldn't list which site the post was coming from. This led me to create the "Blog Fiction Widget" which you now see on your left. It allows me to list as many of the latest posts as I want, indicate which Blog Fiction it comes from, and when you hover over the text, it will, if available, give a brief description of the site or post. As I come up with new ideas on how to improve it(and the time to do it), it will change, but for now, it does everything that I originally wanted.

Having said all that I still consider the widget to be in Beta. So if you see any funky behavior from it, I would love to know about it. Especially if you are using any of the following web browsers: Intenet Explorer 6, Any version of Opera, or any version of Safari. I don't have access to those browsers so I could test it with them.

Now, the fact that I had to create my own feed leaves me with a positive consequence. I can give the widget to other people for their website or blog. So, what I'm asking is if there is any interest out there from you blog fiction writers for this widget?

Here's how it would work. I will soon post the code and tutorial on how to include the Blog Fiction Widget on your website. If you would like to use the widget for you site, you may take the code and use it at any time. However, if you run a blog fiction site and want your blog fiction to be included in the widget that everyone gets, you have to host the widget on your blog fiction as well.

This site's widget will always have everyone's feed, whether they choose to host the widget themselves or not. But, if you want to be included in the widget's feed that everyone else will have, you have to host the widget yourself. The whole goal is to try and connect the blog fiction community to each other- a problem Betsy Friedrich wrote about in her Blog Ficiton thesis(pdf).

If you are interested in hosting this widget and getting in it's feed, please let me know in the Widget Forum. As I stated, I still consider the software to be in beta. Therefore, I'll only be accepting 5 blog fiction sites at first(first come, first serve). Once I'm convinced that all the bugs have been worked out, I'll open it up to everyone. Once I have 5 responses, I will list the code and tutorial(mostly cut & paste) on how to include the widget on your website or blog.